| HENRY
BLACKER LISTEN TO THIS RELEASE VIA BANDCAMP BELOW
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LIMITED EDITION 300 ONLY BLACK VINYL LP. HOUSED IN A 350GSM BOARD PRINTED OUTER SLEEVE WITH BLACK INNER BAG
ORDER VIA THE WEBSHOP OR BANDCAMP SITE (IF STILL AVAILABLE)
LP Tracklisting
A1 Cag Mag (4:43)
A2 Two Shapes (4:04)
A3 Roman Nails (3:28)
A4 A Dredger Thirst (5:03)
A5 Shingles To The Floor (3:42)
B1 Cellmate (5:33)
B2 The New Evil (4:22)
B3 Keep It Out Of Your Heart (4:52)
B4 Little Lanes (5:14)
Blurb :
Third full length from Somerset trio Henry
Blacker, follow up to 2013's Hungry Dogs Will Eat Dirty Puddings and
2015's Summer Tombs. As with the first two Riot Season is again taking
on the release.
HB Formed because there's nothing to do in
Somerset. HB Formed because the other band they do (Hey Colossus)
rehearse in London and they wanted a band they didn't need to travel
the width of the country to jam with. This nine song 40 minute record
lyrically covers the downtrodden, shaking them with lysergically
gloopy riffs of both the upbeat and downbeat nature. it is perfectly
suited for 30 people in a bar having a night of pints. Or a packed
venue in some exotic hot spot full of characters having a night of
white wines. Or would sit nicely sound tracking a person at home
secretly having a night of cans alone, drowning their misery under the
weight of an 8 pack of European strength lager.
Inspiration comes from all the desert rock
bands and angular punk rock bands that always get listed on these
things, you can imagine. Bands that list bands on these things that
they want you to think they sound like are ridiculous. They did
recently get included on a recent Bandcamp piece: 'Top Ten UK
Noiserock bands', but that list didn't include Drunk In Hell so it's
not to be trusted.
This record was recorded in Bristol and
Barton St David by Ben Turner. Look up Barton St David, it's in the
middle of nowhere and it's really lovely. It's also where HB rehearse.
It's got it all, and biscuits on top.
HENRY BLACKER ON TOUR APRIL/MAY '18
6th April - Reading, South St Arts
Centre - w/ Head Drop / Blimp
13th April - Plymouth, Union Corner - w/
Brunel
18th April - Paris, FR, Instants
Chavires - w/ Lower Slaughter
19th April - Rouen, FR, Les 3 Pieces -
w/ Lower Slaughter
20th April - Lyon, FR, Le Troksen - w/
Lower Slaughter
21st April - Liege, BE, Insert Name
festival
26th April - Brighton, Sticky Mike's -
w/ Part Chimp
19th May - London, Borderline - w/ Pere
Ubu
REVIEWS
Henry Blacker is the Somerset based half
of the mighty Hey Colossus. It’s what they do while the other three
are swanning about being part of the metropolitan liberal elite or
otherwise enjoying big city entertainments unavailable in the rural
west country. The Making of Junior Bonner is their third album and it
lands with a pleasingly dirty, heavy thud. Like something it’s taken
the two of you an hour to drag out of the woods and up a muddy bank
finally dropping into the boot of your knackered four door. It smells
a bit of spilt diesel and woodsmoke.
It’s not a massive departure from their
previous two albums and like them both it’s excellent,
uncomplicated, shit-kicking fun. If you’re quick you can get a free
CD of their first two with it, astoundingly good value but the sort of
thing that makes me ruefully shake my head. How are any of those left
lying around the Riot Season office? How are a band this great not
more widely beloved? It’s a sackload of riffs and great thick fuzzy
guitar, irresistible forward motion. If you like Hey Colossus but
you’ve not checked them out you’re really slacking – imagine if
‘Hot Grave’ was a band.
They get called stoner rock and compared
to Queens Of The Stone Age a bit more than they’d probably like and,
yeah, you can hear it in the opener ‘Cag Mag’ a little. Still, if
Queens are blasting out across the desert in a shiny corvette full of
misplaced self belief Henry Blacker are more like a fight in the car
park of a carvery that ends with everyone making up and buying each
other drinks until closing. They’d have sat comfortably on the bill
between Tad and Nirvana in 1990, or USA Nails and Casual Nun this
summer. You get the idea, dirt simple noise rock with chunks of punk
and metal sticking out of it, they’re absolutely great.
Their recipe is not fancy or overly
complex but they do vary it, ‘Two Shapes’ is a full tilt rager
with a great false ending. ‘Keep It Out Of Your Heart’ is almost a
pop song buried beneath the sludge and appears to be about resisting
the toxic ideas in some newspapers and mainstream discourse “Keep it
out of your heart, keep it out of your mind and your mouth”. A
certain, roadside-ketamine-death of a personality comes to mind. Tim
Farthing’s vocals switch between a submerged affectless drone and a
fierce roar in occasionally disturbing schizophrenic fashion that make
his words hard to pick out but when you can they’re usually great.
There’s nothing here as immediately
funny as ‘Shit Magus’ or gut punchingly moving as ‘Summer
Tombs’ off the last album and the general mood is of dark tales
sometimes at odds with the upbeat music. ‘Shingles To The Floor’
is another charging rocker with a deceptively sweet chorus buried in
it and finds him driven by guilt to suicide “I did a dreadful thing,
and now I’m going to swing, up from the attic beam”. On the very
next tune the violence turns towards an abusive cellmate “last night
I murdered my cellmate, strung him up with his sheets” over a slower
more doom soaked riff. I’m almost 100% sure this isn’t all
autobiographical.
Not content with all the impressive
guitaring, singing, growling and songwriting Tim once again provides
the artwork which gives the album its name (he’s probably great at
pool and a really good cook too, sickening really). A startlingly
accurate pencil rendering of a photo of Sam Peckinpah and Steve
McQueen on set during, well, the making of Junior Bonner. It’s not
clear if it has much direct bearing on the record’s contents but…
Junior Bonner was a film that ruefully looked at the fading American
west. It was Peckinpah’s next film after Straw Dogs, which featured
some dark and bloody doings down in the west country. Surely such
elegantly drawn parallels must be more than serendipity.
On ‘The New Evil’ they get an
impressively metal swagger going, a thread that peaks on final track
‘Little Lanes’ with a double shot of Iron Maiden in its galloping
opening, but Maiden if they’d been left out in a field for years,
Rusty Maiden. It may or may not be about poor phone reception in
Somerset but they get a great groove going before heading back over
the field into the night. Seriously now, buy this record and tell your
friends because they deserve your love.
I know this is their third album now, but
three things still present themselves as nicely suprising when hearing
Henry Blacker - the first being that this is, largely, a spin off band
from the mighty Hey Colossus, second that at times they follow a pure
stoner rock line, and third that it is so good. Not that I'd expect
anything less, but first of all - where do they find the time? - and
then the stylistic stance, not one I'd naturally associate.
The opening two tracks are phenomenal. Cag
Mag begins with a big punked up stoner riff, continuing through as if
Greenleaf or even Colour Haze are in the room. It is glorious, a song
trapped in my head days after hearing it first. Two Shapes is itching
to be unleashed from the start, a burst of pace when freed, a Hermano
style evident throughout. The flair at the end is ridiculous fun,
channeling a pure desert spirit of the greats.
There's reminders of the whole Kyuss
family tree, from Mondo Generator on Shingles to the Floor, to early
QOTSA or Brant Bjork's solo material on Keep It Out Of Your Heart,
whose grizzly jaunty riff is all smiles and fuzz. There's an aggregate
Desert Sessions mood throughout, and the excellent closing Little
Lines brings thoughts of Blues for the Red Sun and its bass rumble in
its boisterousness.
There are hints outside of stoner rock
realm, AmRep sounds for example, on A Dredger First for one, and even
that has me thinking of The Heads to begin with, the slacker vocals
drifting in non-committedly on the sedated introduction.
All in all, this is an awesome exhibition
of how stoner rock can sound relevant in 2018, the commendably
restrained vocal performance a perfect accompaniment to the fuzz-out
roll. It might not maintain the heights generated in the first couple
of tracks, but that's a quibble barely fair to mention, as ...Junior
Bonner is a joyous ride of high end stoner rock.
The Hey Colossus offshoot trio are still
churning out material so croonsomely fuzz-ridden that it's every bit
as wicked as Queens Of The Stone Age's early triumphs (they attract
that comparison an awful lot but some clichés become clichés for
good reason). Yet Henry Blacker don't get the credit they deserve
because they're small fry on a low-scale (if excellent) label and are
middle-aged blokes from Somerset with day jobs and other commitments
rather than tall Californians with enough adoration and arrogance to
strut around kicking photographers in the face.
Whereas previous Henry Blacker albums have
opened with the most accessible tune and sequenced the rougher and
weirder tracks later on, The Making Of Junior Bonner remains pretty
hip-swingingly accessible throughout (the occasional effects-laden
roar aside). Conceivably, then, this third LP is Henry Blacker's Songs
For The Deaf. Embrace its greasy splendour and purchase the album in
your millions, people. Put them in the same league as Alison Wolf and
The Royal Bloods. Let's have them supporting Foo Fighters and hanging
out on CBeebies.
UK Sludge Rockers - Henry Blacker - come of age with their splendidly heavy new album - The Making Of Junior Bonner. Henry Blacker has been more recognised for being a spin-off band from Henry Blacker. Though that's going to change with this album. As Henry Blacker are three albums into their career and this is perhaps their most complete and most confident record to date.
The previous two albums saw Henry Blacker
creating a Punk/Sludge/Stoner sound with varied results. I'm a huge
fan of their first two records but The Making Of Junior Bonner is in a
league of its own.
Opening track - Cag Mag - is a sludgy
driven number with heavy outbursts of Punk driven Stoner Rock sounds.
The song wastes no time in creating a not so subtle atmosphere where
the music drifts from one psychedelic sound to the next. The doom
based guitars can be quite melodic and heavy at the same time with the
pounding drums adding quite a progressive feel. Henry Blacker's
overall sound does feel inspired by the "Miami/Florida"
sound that spawned such killer bands such as Torche, and Floor. Though
Henry Blacker still retain a certain British charm with the delivery
of the vocals.
Second track -Two Shapes - offers a more
"upbeat" kind of sludgy groove with the music being slightly
louder than the vocals. When the heavy psychedelic sounds appear the
music becomes that little bit heavier. The one part I enjoyed the most
about this album is how Henry Blacker added elements of Desert Rock to
their overall sound. So the whole feel of the album can be quite
upbeat and sunny in places whilst still offering a bleak atmosphere on
certain parts of the album.
Third Track - Roman Nails - is one of the
loudest songs on the album with Henry Blacker unleashing a trippy
amount of aggression.
The Making Of Junior Bonner has its fair
share of experimental moments with the band changing their overall
sound on certain songs of the album with fourth song - A Dredger
Thirst - offering a fine line between Psychedelic Stoner Rock riffs
and the bleak Sludge Rock vibes. The lyrics are slightly depressing in
places and shows you how Henry Blacker have improved as songwriters
since their debut album.
My complaint about Henry Blacker two
previous albums that they were on for too short. Mostly under thirty
minutes. So it's good to see this album being on for a more reasonable
forty minutes. The second half of the album is equally good and heavy
as the first part with Henry Black playing a more daring sound on
tracks such as: Shingles To The Floor, Cell Mate, Keep It Out Of Your
Head and Little Lanes.
The production is good for the most part.
However there were a few parts where I had to increase the volume on
my portable music player. It won't stop your overall enjoyment of the
album but it's something you should lookout for.
The Making Of Junior Bonner sees Henry
Blacker at the top of their creative powers and offers one of the most
entertaining Sludge/Stoner Rock albums you'll likely to hear all year.
A definite contender for one of the year's best albums.
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